


Precession of the Equinoxes

by endlesshorizons



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Angst, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endlesshorizons/pseuds/endlesshorizons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On quiet, solemn nights, they whisper stories into the safety of the tent. Stories that have no place in the light of day.</p><p>One night, Sherlock whispers, “I'm glad It happened.” John leans in and presses a chaste kiss to his lips. He doesn't say that he is happier than he has been for years; he doesn't need to.</p><p>Apocalypse AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precession of the Equinoxes

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Precessão dos Equinócios](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3329360) by [Jun00IX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jun00IX/pseuds/Jun00IX)



**one.**

 

John sits on the lonely hillside, head tilted back to gaze at the stars. He has already set up camp for the night, the sturdy army-grade tent tucked into the bottom of the outcrop nearby, but he doesn’t want to hide away in its dark cocoon just yet. Instead, he loses himself staring at the tapestry of bright silvery points above.

He had lived most of his life in London, where one could make out one or two of the brightest stars on a particularly clear night, but where the night sky is otherwise a dull, lacklustre charcoal. He had grown up knowing the constellations in theory only, with occasional glimpses when his family took a trip to the country. When he had first been stationed in Afghanistan, John had been shocked by the brightness of the stars in the desert, painting the sky with strokes and whirls of silver light.

Now, he traces the patterns with his eyes and whispers their names into the too-quiet air. _Orion with his club and arrow, and the dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor, following in his wake. Cassiopeia sitting in her chair, lost in the beauty of her own reflection. Gemini. Cancer. The Big Dipper, inside the Great Bear. And there’s the Milky Way, the entire length of it visible tonight as it flows across the sky._ John stays outside until he feels his eyes begin to droop before heading back into his tent for the night.

 

\--

 

It has been a couple months now, since Then, and John is settling into a pattern. Close to two years ago, he had moved into the suburbs of London after being discharged from military service, unable to afford a decent flat in the city with his pension. He had attempted to settle into his new life, slowly getting used to the way his shoulder ached on rainy days, the limp he shouldn’t have, and the monotonous day-to-day maladies of his patients at the local surgery. If John was being honest, the panic when It happened was a bit of a relief.

It hadn’t taken long for the polite, friendly veneer of the suburbs to crack, and John had picked up what food and supplies he could carry and left before the neighbourhood could disintegrate into complete chaos. The suburbs were an unsustainable construction of Western society, he remembered from late-night chats with his university girlfriend who had majored in geography, and John headed for the country where houses had wood stoves, wells and vegetable gardens.

Unfortunately, the villages he has since encountered are tight-knit, with little trust for outsiders and no places for them to fit into. Most communities already have a resident doctor, although he is occasionally able to trade his services for food or a warm bed for a few nights. Eventually, he moves on, and John finds that he enjoys the nomadic lifestyle. It is lonely, but also freeing. His limp has completely gone away, and John likes that out here in the wilderness, there is no one to judge him or to dictate who he ought to be and what he ought to want.

 

\--

 

John freezes as he hears footsteps behind him, the sound of someone or something crushing the branches and grasses as they make their way through the forest. While wolves and bears have been extinct for centuries, wild dogs run rampant these days and one never knows if a particular dog will bound up excitedly with a wagging tail or attack with all the ferociousness of its ancestors. No encounter with a wild dog, however, could be as bad as coming face to face with a human. People aren’t very kind to one another After, and John has come across more than one ravaged campsite with its owner decomposing in a pool of dried blood with a slit throat.

Glancing around, John curses the fact that there is no adequate hiding place close by, and instead grips the sharp rock he has been using to hunt and feels for the gun hidden under his jacket. The rustling sound continues, and John watches with dread as a man steps out from the bushes, heading for the stream along which John was crouching. He pulls out a water bottle from his pack, and John prays that he will fill it up and go back the way he came without noticing John. But everyone’s senses are sharpened these days – anyone who has survived this long, at least – and the man freezes and snaps his head around to look at John, dark curls spinning. John stands, pulling himself up into his Captain Watson pose, and the two men regard each other for a few seconds. Finally, the other man speaks in a voice rusty from disuse.

“Ex-military. Doctor, too. No wonder you’re doing well. The injury must be a bother in these conditions though, isn’t it?”

John blinks, opens his mouth and closes it again. He is out of practice with conversation, although he is fairly certain that his reaction would be similar Before, as well. “How did you know that?”

The other man sighs before continuing, surprisingly talkative. “I didn’t know, I saw. Your posture says military, and the neat stitches on that wound on your hand say medical training. Could be a medic, but your shirt says St. Bart’s, so most likely doctor. Your right shoe and the cuff of the right leg of your trousers show greater wear than your left, but your leg doesn't show any weakness when you stand. So it healed well, meaning the injury is at least a year old, when you had access to proper medical care, but it can't have been too long ago because those jeans can't be more than two years old, given the amount of fading at the seams. May or may not be related to military service, but balance of probability says it is, and any injury lasting long enough to create that kind of wear pattern on your clothes must be major enough to continue giving you problems.”

John blinks, absorbing the man’s line of reasoning. “That was amazing.”

“Do you think so?” He replied, surprise flickering through the blue-green shards in his eyes.

“Of course it was. It was extraordinary, it was quite extraordinary.”

“That's not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?”

The other man gives John a lopsided grin. “These days, mostly threats to bash in my head.”

John smiles in return. “Would’ve thought you’d learn by now.”

“Of course I did. I learned it's easier to just stay away from people.”

This startles a laugh out of John. “Yes, _that’s_ the most reasonable conclusion to draw.” He shakes his head in amusement. “You did get something wrong, though. The limp in my leg, it wasn't an injury, it was psychosomatic. The bullet actually went through my shoulder.”

“Oh,” the man says, looking furious with himself. “There's always something.”

John lets out another chuckle, then offers his right hand. “John Watson.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” answers the other man and John thinks, _of course he would have such a pretentious name._ Sherlock nods, then reaches into his backpack again for what John realizes is a handmade water filter made of different sizes of sediment. He fills his water bottle as John watches, then stands back up and stashes the bottle away. “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Watson. Now I must be on my way.”

John is startled by the abrupt farewell, although when he thinks about it, he can't say why he had expected more. “Oh, er, I thought we might-”

“Nothing personal, Doctor, but I don’t do partnerships.”

“Right,” John replies awkwardly and nods. Sherlock Holmes turns and disappears back into the thicket of trees.

 

\--

 

After the strange encounter, John packs his things and moves on. He finds that he is strangely disappointed. The other man’s voice haunts him in his dreams, weaving its way around fragmented images and whispering quiet promises. John tells himself that it has been too long since he has had human contact; the last village he passed through had been roughly two weeks ago. While John has always been a private person, he had enjoyed the company of his close friends and later, his regiment, and being completely alone is a skill he has yet to master.

Two days later, John is setting up camp for the night when he hears growling and barking nearby. John freezes and surveys the supplies laid out on the ground, faced with the classic fight-or-flight dilemma. Then, he hears a shout in a familiar baritone. It takes John a few moments to be certain that he isn’t imagining the voice, and sets out for the origin for the noises, hand wrapped tightly around the grip of his gun.

Quietly, John tiptoes to the nearby clearing. Sherlock is there, messy curls flying and gripping what appears to be a ceremonial dagger in one hand. Three wild dogs – big, rabid-looking mutts – stalk around him in a circle. Suddenly, the biggest one leaps, pushing the man down to the ground with an audible thump and aiming for his throat. Without thinking twice, John draws his handgun and shoots a bullet cleanly through the dog’s head. It falls sideways off Sherlock, and the deafening howls of its packmates fill the air as they rush to its side.

Sherlock looks up with a dazed expression and meets John’s eyes over the barrel of the gun. He stands with a flourish and follows John as he leads the way back to the campsite. Quickly and without exchanging a word, the two men pack up the site. John swings his pack over his back and they leave as fast as they can, trying to gain as much distance as possible before the two remaining dogs recover and begin tracking them. It is twenty minutes later that Sherlock finally breaks the silence, stuttering awkwardly.

“That, er, thing that you, that you did. That was, um, good.”

John blinks up at the man beside him. “You mean saving your life? Yeah, I’d say that was good.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and lets out a put-upon sigh. With what appears to be great effort, he says, “thank you.”

John laughs. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

“I mean it. I hardly think I’m worth wasting a bullet on. You can’t have many cartridges left.”

“I have a couple. Enough if I’m conserving, and I have been.”

They walk in silence for a while, until they are fairly certain that they are not being pursued by the wild dogs. At the next clearing, John sets down his pack.

“Still think that alone protects you?”

Sherlock quirks one corner of his lips. “I admit, I do occasionally make errors in judgment.”

 

\--

 

John and Sherlock easily settle into the new arrangement, adjusting their routines for two. John is surprised at how effortlessly they work together, like they have been waiting for each other all along. They travel through the countryside, John hunting for small game while Sherlock uses his impressive knowledge of wild plants to gather edible species as well as collect herbs with pharmaceutical properties, just in case. Neither have a destination in mind, or people to look for. This is no perilous journey to the Promised Land, or arduous quest for the Holy Grail, but simply two people wandering wherever their whims take them.

They pass through villages now and then, and John soon learns to bribe Sherlock into keeping his mouth shut when they do. Once, Sherlock deduces an affair between the wife of the farmer who has agreed to put them up for a few nights, and the veterinarian who frequently sees to their cows. John and Sherlock slip out during the ensuing chaos, before their hosts’ ire can be turned on them, ducking around confused livestock and bounding into the nearby woods. John glances at Sherlock as they dodge around the trees, still running even though they no longer need to be. The wind catches Sherlock’s hair and plasters the too-long strands across his eyes, which are alight with excitement and mischief. John bursts into high-pitched giggles that he would be embarrassed by under different circumstances and asks Sherlock to _please_ save his grand reveals next time until after he’s had a proper bath.

John marvels at how naturally things flow between the two of them. He briefly wonders if it has to do with their special circumstances, and decides it probably does – after all, in all his thirty-seven years, he has never experienced such effortless friendship. It doesn’t matter anyway, because things are how they are, and John is glad to have Sherlock with him right now.

 

\--

 

They are sitting around a fire, roasting slices of what used to be a rabbit when Sherlock says, seemingly out of the blue, “I was looking for a flatmate.”

“What?” John asks. He is getting used to Sherlock’s special brand of conversation.

“Around the time you were discharged. I was looking for a flatmate.”

“God, you, a flatmate?”

Sherlock cracks an impish smile. “The longest one lasted two weeks.”

“Oh really? I’m surprised it didn’t end in homicide.”

“Oh it did. Sort of. He moved out after I brought home something from the homicide case I was working on.”

“What did you bring home?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Just the severed head.”

 

\--

 

On clear nights, John invites Sherlock to sit with him outside their tent. He is surprised to find that, for a man who has extensive knowledge of so many things, Sherlock knows next to nothing about the universe beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. He takes to teaching Sherlock the constellations, night by night, and Sherlock grudgingly admits that knowing the night sky has utility for navigational purposes. He points out the zodiac, telling him stories and explaining the change in their positions throughout the seasons.

When John finishes recounting the story of Gemini the twins, he turns and finds that Sherlock has been looking not at the stars above, but at him. John can’t be sure who leans in first, or if it is both at once, but their lips meet under the canopy of twinkling lights.

 

\--

 

Their lives go on the same way as before, only with more touches as they go about their day, spontaneous kisses, and nights of tangled limbs and heated breaths mingling in the tent, just big enough for two. In another life, John would have put up a token protest, even if it’s just in his head. Sure, he's found men attractive before, but he had never acted on those attractions. But everything feels so natural, so _inevitable_ , that John can't muster up the effort for a sexual identity crisis. Not out here, where there are no rules or judgments, just two crazy men giggling their way through the apocalypse.

One day in the ensuing weeks, they run into a group of five travelling together. The instinctual, self-preserving parts of their brains are telling them to go on, but one girl in the group is badly injured and John decides that if the Hippocratic Oath has survived from before the era of flushing toilets, it will have to hang on after their demise as well. When John has gotten her all stitched up and handed over a few precious antibiotic pills, the leader of the group, a tall, muscular young man, asks the two of them to stay. John gives it a few moments of thought, knowing that there is strength in numbers. But Sherlock cuts to the chase before John can voice his opinion either way.

“No. John and I have a lot of sex and I don't think that would be very pleasant for you. Actually, I think one of you wouldn't mind, but we do. Plus, that man over there is going to double-cross you sooner or later, and I'd like to be far away from you lot when that happens.”

A silence falls over the group. John glances up at Sherlock, then warily at the seemingly bland, innocent-looking man sitting at the edge of the motley group. He tries to decide if the situation calls for an embarrassed, exasperated “Sherlock!” or if that would just draw unnecessary attention to the part of the monologue that the others have probably already forgotten in the wake of the other revelation. In the end, he stands with an awkward nod, and follows after Sherlock, who has gathered John’s things and is already making his way away from the group. He catches up to the other man and falls into sync with the familiar thud of his boots. Suddenly, he realises that the possibility has never even occurred to him that Sherlock may stab him in the back, figuratively or literally.

Beside him, Sherlock reaches over and uncharacteristically clasps a hand in his. “Just the two of us against the rest of the world,” he says in a soft, low voice.

 

\--

 

On quiet, solemn nights, they whisper stories into the safety of the tent. Stories that have no place in the light of day. John speaks about the nightmares that still haunt him, the things he saw and the acts that were performed by all sides in the war. He talks about going to see Harry on that Day, after the world had collapsed around their ears, and asking her to go away with him. Instead, she just took another gulp of her whiskey.

Sherlock talks about finding his landlady mauled outside their home the day after It happened, and how his brother had stayed and tried to keep the country afloat even after there was no more need for things like national borders. He tells John about the day he almost walked away with an insane, murderous psychopath.

One night, Sherlock whispers, “I'm glad It happened.” John leans in and presses a chaste kiss to his lips. He doesn't say that he is happier than he has been for years; he doesn't need to.

 

 

**two.**

 

The days go on, across gentle, hilly grasslands, tinkling streams through forests and sheer cliffs over open ocean. The first few chilly bites of late autumn start to insinuate themselves into the warm nights of summer until one day, Sherlock says, “We should find ourselves a house for the winter.”

John nods but feels uneasy. He knows that, while they could survive through the winter outside, they run a greater risk of illness and will need to collect more supplies. He is wary of seemingly-empty houses, however, because the last time he wandered into such a house in the weeks immediately After, he had found an entire family lying crumpled in a mess in the dining room. Suddenly, the air heated up around John, gunshots and shouts filled the silence and John was standing in front of a different family on a different continent, and he was toolatetoolatetoolate.

According to the rusty, barely-standing road signs, they are somewhere in the Sussex Downs when Sherlock and John stumble across a small but neat and charming cottage, tucked away at the edges of a strip of woods and miles away from the nearest neighbours. Sherlock spends a few minute wandering up and down the front lawn, at times crouching and jumping up and down to examine something or the other. Finally, he takes out a lock-picking tool from his pack and starts working on the door. After a while, there is a soft click and the door opens slowly with the hesitant welcome of a long-ago friend. John takes a quiet, deep breath and follows without a word, but some gesture or the other must betray his reluctance because Sherlock says, “It belonged to one of those rich city types who owned expensive cottages but never had the time to make use of them. No one was here when It happened.”

The house is as lovely inside as it is from the outside. A little exploration yields a kitchen and a spacious living area on the first floor, two bedrooms on the level above, and a nice terrace in the back. It seems to have escaped the looting that was commonplace immediately After, and the colour-coordinated sofas and tables remain untouched in their places, though dusty and with some suggestions of the presence of mice and bugs. Overall, though, the cottage is cosy and suited for their purposes, with a fireplace, a wood stove and an icebox. Satisfied, the two men settle in and set up their things near the hearth in the lounge, unfamiliar as they are with the extra space even in the relatively small cottage after months of living in a tent. Soon, with the help of an extra store of firewood in the attached shed, a fire dances into life in the long-vacant living room, sending off sparks and tendrils of warmth.

 

\--

 

As wisps of cold winter air begin creeping in through the hastily-repaired cracks, John and Sherlock begin to make what preparations they can. They hunt and gather food from the forest surrounding the house, and find fishing spots along the river nearby. Sherlock discovers methods of preserving food using what materials they can find, and John spends long days chopping firewood from the forest behind the cottage. Night after night, as they watch Aquarius edge its way below the horizon and Leo dashing in, the stockpiles in the cottage grow. Soon, John and Sherlock learn the surrounding land the way they know each bump and crevice of each others’ bodies, and the quirks and cubbyholes of the house become as familiar as the personalities that fill it.

 

\--

 

“John!” Sherlock’s voice comes echoing through the woodland on the other side of the stream.

John starts where he is standing on the large, jagged rock reaching over the rushing river. Even when chilly wind is whistling through empty tree branches, Sherlock and John are reluctant to stay in the cottage all day. The doors and windows of the house have been filled to keep in as much heat as possible, and the stuffy, fireplace-warmed air feels like an invisible cage to free-roaming creatures.

“What is it?” John calls back.

“Come look at this!” the voice answers with a childlike excitement. Doubtlessly, Sherlock has just made another one of his discoveries. Sherlock has told him that he used to be a detective of some sort, and it appears that a significant portion of his investigative energy has been redirected to whatever natural phenomena happens to catch his eye.  Several weeks ago, when the weather was still warm enough for them to make their presence known, Sherlock’s obsession had been bees. The threat of stings didn’t seem to deter him from poking around much closer than he should, raving about hive structures and the resurgence in populations, reminding John of stubborn cartoon bears with a love of honey in his persistence and lack of common sense. The phase ended when Sherlock returned to the cottage one day with a swollen nose. Thankfully, he isn’t allergic to bee venom and there was very little obstruction to his breathing, but the episode had ended in John calling him Rudolph mercilessly for a straight week.

Smiling fondly, John moves to once again provide the genius with his adoring audience. The past few days of rainfall has raised the level of the stream and caused the water to run across the jagged pieces of bedrock where it had previously quietly meandered. Still, the creek is neither wide nor deep, and can be easily crossed by a grown man in a few paces. The two of them had passed over it many times in their explorations without much thought, and this is probably why John doesn’t pay much attention to balancing himself against the unexpectedly large force of the flow of water. He falls, unable to regain his footing against the slippery stones below.

The stream bed is made up of jagged, mostly-unweathered slabs of rock, and a particularly sharp one tears through John’s khakis and into the flesh of his right leg from the force of the fall. The sight of blood mixing with water and the pain in his bad leg makes his brain freeze up, and for a while he can do nothing but sit there panting heavily as icy water washes over him.

When he is once again fully aware of his surroundings, Sherlock is standing over him with barely-concealed panic and checking him over with unusual gentleness. John swallows thickly and reassures his friend that he is all right. He does accept his help in standing up and, to his horror, realises that his bad leg is refusing to cooperate. It aches with a pain deeper and more debilitating than the fresh injury should, and collapses when he attempts to put his weight on it. Carefully, gritting his teeth and leaning more heavily on Sherlock than he would like, John makes it out of the stream. A quick examination shows that the cut is long but not very deep; the wound would not pose any concern at all, if not for the possibility of infection and its apparent role in triggering his old psychosomatic limp. The situation is worsened by the sudden onslaught of rain, which falls over the world like a translucent curtain and delivers the cold through layers of clothing, cutting into the bones.

By the time that John and Sherlock struggle back to the cottage, they are both soaked through and shivering, and the unreasonable pain in his leg strikes irrational fear into John’s heart. They crouch by the fireplace, huddled in dusty towels and blankets pilfered from the empty bedrooms. Sherlock hovers over John, cleaning his wound with heated water, suturing the skin closed and applying the last of the antibiotic cream. They can only pray that it would be enough to keep away infection.

 

\--

 

Miraculously, the skin cells grow back with minimal redness or pus, and the wound begins to heal with no sign of infection. John is so thankful for this turn of events that he doesn’t pay much attention to the tickle in his throat, at first. After all, his body is strong and should have no problem fighting off a little cold.

The sore throat doesn’t seem to get better, however, but persists and appears to fluctuate in its severity like the one visible indicator of an invisible battle. John begins to get concerned when the coughs seem to originate from deeper in his respiratory tract and he starts to feel nauseous. Sherlock grudgingly agrees it would be best for him to keep his distance until the cold clears up, tucking John in beside the fire and making himself at home in the kitchen instead with thick blankets and his experiments.

The days go on and John feels himself languishing from boredom. It reminds him of those endless, dreary days after he was discharged, sitting alone in his tiny bedsit and staring at the wall. Back then, he had been trapped by his own mind and the invisible barriers he had constructed around himself. The depression had been a grey, heavy cloud weighing over him, like the suffocating feeling one experiences in gloomy, humid weather. He hasn’t felt that way in many months, but now worry begins to prickle at him like a slight but persistent chill that just won’t be ignored.

 

\--

 

John struggles awake to a massive headache and aching muscles. His eyes are crusty and he has to force them to open. Sherlock is kneeling beside him, and John realises that there is a gradually-warming wet cloth on his forehead.

“What are you doing?” he croaks, feeling the mucus bubble in his throat.

“Playing nurse, apparently,” Sherlock says, making a face that is so carefully irritated that John immediately recognises it as a mask.

John sighs, exasperated. “I thought we went over this.”

“Yes. That was before you started running a high fever and experiencing laboured breathing.”

“All the more reason to stay away.”

Sherlock just waves a dismissive hand at this. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re really not getting the idea of infection, are you?” John explodes, something snapping inside him from frustrated worry. “You’re not invincible, Sherlock! What if you get sick too? Where’s that going to leave us?”

John wriggles out of his sleeping bag and starts to stand up. His muscles are weak, but they still hold him with a little effort. When Sherlock reaches over to push him back down, however, it becomes clear that there is no way he can put up a decent protest.

“Stop acting like a child!” Sherlock snaps, making John scoff at the irony. “You are in no condition to struggle, so quit being stupid and _lie down_!”

The two men glare at each other for a few seconds, John trapped in his awkward half-crouching, half-standing position by the firm grip on his shoulder. Finally, he reluctantly lies back down. Paradoxically for a man with such reverence for logic, Sherlock’s decisions are often made with a stubbornness that is fervently emotional in its refusal to bow to other arguments, valid or otherwise. The tense silence continues to drag on. Although he has accepted that there is no way for him to escape, John refuses to make the concession of starting conversation. To his surprise, it is Sherlock who speaks first.

“Have I told you the case with the serial-killing cabbie?”

“Nope.”

“I didn’t think so. I suppose I was a bit of an idiot in that one. I thought you might like that,” Sherlock says grudgingly, and John recognises it for what it is, as a sort of an acknowledgment of his opinions on the matter without giving in to his reasoning.

Sherlock talks about the case and, as usual, John listens raptly to the details of the serial “suicides”. Vaguely, John recalls something of the sort from the news a few years ago, but he had just been discharged at the time and wasn’t very interested in what was happening with the rest of the world. As Sherlock continues his account, however, listing his deductions and the tales of chasing a cab across London, jumping over rooftops, and the murderer showing up at his flat under the very noses of a team from Scotland Yard, John begins to feel an illness in his stomach that has nothing to do with any microorganisms that have taken up residence there. Sherlock must notice that something is wrong from John’s reactions, because he finishes his story with uncertain hesitance and asks, “what is it?”, sounding genuinely confused as he appears to mentally re-evaluate the elements of the case.

John shakes his head and drags Sherlock down to the floor, quietly telling him to go to sleep. John forgets, sometimes, how little Sherlock seems to understand the emotions of others, with the quickfire way he is able to deduce most of John’s thoughts. Sherlock had meant to cheer him up with a story of his own fallibility, a gesture that John appreciates for what must have taken for his ego, but he can’t stop thinking about Sherlock’s pale, lean form against a darkened classroom, goaded on by recklessness and a complete disregard for his own life.

 

\--

 

The sun rises, sets, and rises again, and John feels the fever swell and ebb without truly abating. His coughs bring up blood, and the flecks of red on the hardwood floor have the finality of familiar blood splatters on desert sand. Sherlock wanders in and out of the room, whinging about the lack of stimulation. When night falls once again, he deigns to curl up beside John and bury his head in his sleeping bag. For several minutes, John watches as the mass of dark curls bob up and down beside him with each even breath. Finally, he forces himself to move, muscles wincing as it struggles to support his weight and his head spinning from the sudden movement, knowing that Sherlock will not be asleep for long.

John is glad that they are still in the habit of keeping most of their things packed up all the time, ready to go in case of emergency. He collects water and food, and sifts through his pack to remove anything of Sherlock’s that has since migrated into it; then, he rolls up his sleeping bag, careful not to disturb the lightly-snoring figure beside it. With one last sombre look at Sherlock’s peaceful, trusting form on the floor, he leaves the house he has started to think of as home.

The cold air that hits him upon stepping out the door is a shock after his last few fevered days cooped up indoors. His head hasn’t stopped spinning, but he shifts the heavy pack on his shoulders and steps unsteadily into the darkness. John decides to follow the stream out towards the sea, hoping it will lead to milder weather. Eventually, his uneven steps settle into a rhythm despite the hazy gauze that seems to surround his senses and thoughts. It is not dissimilar to the dreams he still has about long, endless hours spent trekking during training, comforting in its familiarity.

John doesn’t know how long he walks, having lost any sense of time in the hypnotic _thump thump thump_ of his steps. A tall figure suddenly materialises in front of him, a solid wall blocking his path. John hadn’t even been aware of another presence, and looks up to find angry eyes glowering at him. The other person grabs John’s shoulders and he automatically slumps into him. A part of him tries to resist the motion, but another, guilty part has been waiting for this from the start.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Sherlock hisses into his ears, and the familiar, deep voice is so soothing that John doesn’t do anything but smile, eyes fluttering closed. “You idiot!” the voice continues, and John is thoroughly shaken until he opens his eyes again and makes eye contact.

“Hi,” John whispers.

“Idiot!” Sherlock rants, “stop trying to be a fucking martyr!” John frowns, sure that there is something wrong with that sentence, until he realizes that this is the first time he has heard Sherlock swear. Dimly, he wonders what this means.

He is surprised when his thoughts are interrupted by the feel of a warm mouth on his and a tongue forcing its way through his lips. For his sluggish mind, the first instinct is to kiss back, and John is more than happy to comply. It is only a few seconds later that something clicks on in his head, much too late, and he tries to push away. Sherlock won’t let him go, however, and a large hand comes to wrap itself around the back of his head, securing him in place. The kiss turns hard and brutal, and John starts to find it hard to breathe.

Finally, Sherlock lets him go. “There,” he says forcefully, “if I were to get infected, that would have done it. Will you come back now?”

John doesn’t have the energy to tell him that is not quite how the immune system works, and can only stare into those bright, fierce eyes and nod.

 

\--

 

John once again finds himself back at the cottage, staring at the patterned wallpaper. Sherlock refuses to leave him alone now, guarding his side tirelessly as he drifts in and out of an increasingly-disoriented consciousness. Sherlock has always cycled through periods of excessive talkativeness and lengthy silence, and he now sometimes spends hours expounding on whatever topic of interest that comes to mind, even if John is not awake to listen.

Often, John would jolt awake to the cadence of Sherlock’s voice and lingering dreams of chasing criminals through the streets of London, unsure of how much of what he sees in his mind is from Sherlock’s retellings and how much is from his fevered imagination. In these dreams, he is never far from the other man, either running beside him or following a few steps behind, sometimes shouldering his way ahead with his hands wrapped around a raised gun.

Sometimes, as Sherlock recounts his cases, he pauses to throw in an offhand comment. “You wouldn’t have liked her,” he says, or “if you were there, he wouldn’t have got way.”

 

\--

 

“Sherlock?”

“Hm?” the other man blinks as if clearing away his thoughts and glances over at John.

It is the first time that John has felt fully lucid for a while. He reaches for Sherlock’s hand and wonders at the way his dark hair turns into various shades of brown and auburn in the late afternoon sun filtering through the curtains. Sherlock doesn’t look quite the same as he remembers in his delirious dreams. His lips are a little bit thinner, light lines trace the ridges of a permanent frown, and his skin is even paler than before.

“In Afghanistan, we didn’t just treat the soldiers,” John begins. “A few local civilians were brought to the base as well, especially those who had acted as guides and interpreters, or who knew someone who did.”

Sherlock nods, brows furrowing slightly in a perplexed expression.

“There was this old man who came in. His son was Afghan police and had been trained by some of the guys on base. We took one look at him and knew that he had waited too long to come in, and there wasn’t much we could do by that point. Even so, in the day he spent in the base hospital, he would–”

“No,” Sherlock interrupts. “I don’t care about your inane, clichéd story.”

John frowns. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Not the exact details, no,” Sherlock replies, “and I don’t want to.”

 

\--

 

Time turns to mash inside the four walls of the room, melding with the smell of firewood and the reddish light of the winter sun like the contents of a blender. John alternates between sleep and delirium, punctuated by sharp jabs and softly burning aches from every part of his body as it fights and retreats bit by bit behind increasingly distant battle lines. John is barely aware of his surroundings most of the time, but throughout it all, there is the warm, determined presence anchored to his side. Speaking or silent, in direct contact or not, the presence stands like a stubborn, singular seamount as the rest of the world bends and crashes around it. Occasionally, snippets of words reach beneath the roiling waves of his jumbled consciousness.

“…yelling about body parts in the fridge…”

“you’d make fun of Mycroft too…”

“…making tea in the mornings…”

“Anderson’s face when he saw…”

And once, a choking sound and a wetness on his forehead.

“…should’ve had more time.”

John wants to tell the voice that everything will be all right, that the sea will calm again once the storm is over. He thinks he reaches out and takes a hold of a cool hand, but he can’t be sure. When he finally takes a steadying breath and allows the tides to wash him away, the voice is quiet and the silence is saturated with things he can’t interpret.

 

 

**three.**

 

Sherlock thinks he can physically feel John’s last shuddering breath leaving his own body. The lungs excrete not only carbon dioxide but also other volatiles and excess heat, Sherlock remembers, and wonders if it is possible for all of his internal organs to make the journey up the airways, as well. Certainly, he feels as if there is nothing remaining in his chest cavity except hollow vacuum.

He looks down at the body lying on his lap, empty and motionless like any other corpse he has come across at crime scenes and in the morgue. Even unconscious and feverish, John emanated a warmth separate from the movement of protons through channels in the mitochondrial membrane, producing energy. Suddenly, he feels a churning in the neglected walls of his stomach. He stands up and steps out the door without stopping to grab his jacket, unable to stand the thought of kneeling by John’s body as it slowly turns cold and rigid.

It is dark outside, Sherlock realises, and the ground is covered with a fine dusting of white. The night sky above is clear without a cloud in sight, and Sherlock finds himself lying down and letting the pinpricks of light fill his field of vision. After so many months of John’s lessons, he is easily able to identify constellation after constellation, with more and more of them becoming visible as his eyes adjust to the darkness.

As he makes his way to the right side of the sky, Sherlock realises with a start that there is a strip of unfamiliar stars. They are simply random luminous points, refusing to organise themselves into any of the patterns that Sherlock had scorned as arbitrary and illogical. It had been several weeks since the last time they had huddled together outside, before the fateful day when John had slipped at the river. The rest of the universe had paid no attention to the troubles of two insignificant human beings, turning and marching on as usual.

Now, Sherlock lies alone on the ground and stares up at the sky spread out above him. Both sets of stars, familiar and unfamiliar, keep watch as he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.


End file.
